Art & Life with Crystal Wagner

Today we’d like to introduce you to Crystal Wagner.

Crystal, please kick things off for us by telling us about yourself and your journey so far.
I am a contemporary interdisciplinary artist whose work spans a broad range of materials, techniques, and processes. I am actively curious about the world I live in. This has me involved in an intense investigation of what it means to be human on this planet, of what people and their relationship with artifice and organic materials and forms are, and what it ultimately means to be a body moving through space set juxtapose other objects and environments. My curiosity runs deep. When I was a kid I was writing and drawing everyday. I have been digging deep for as long as I can remember. Feeling deeply. When I was young, I drew fantastical birds, born from my imagination. Fast forward to now, my large and small bioforms, while abstract in nature, are born of the same ecological structure and language of flora and fauna. The materials and techniques and execution of the edge has evolved, become more nuanced, but the inherent investigation is still there. The discourse between straight lines and the curve, the tension and teleological emphasis of the forms. I graduated from three colleges, completing my terminal degree in printmaking in 2008. I was a college professor for 5 years before my work launched internationally and I was able to resign from my academic post to focus exclusively on my studio practice. Over the past four years I have been traveling all over the world, creating large-scale installations in museums, galleries, for large corporations, some of which are Warner Brothers, Nike, and Viacom and my exterior growth work which I create on the outside of buildings in public spaces is just beginning.

Can you give our readers some background on your art?
Concurrently, I am creating multiple bodies of work that span scope and scale. My large-scale interior installations are made using repurposed and recycled disposable birthday party table cloths. Created site-specifically, they are hybrids between organic and manufactured worlds and use the particular architecture of a space as the substrate. Like growth, I arrive on location with no plan, well, maybe the plan is to trust myself. I work intuitively. This means that for each installation, I am on location working 14-16 hours a day for two weeks to bring the work to life. I am interested in human beings and their increasing disconnection from the natural world. Forms and structures that were at one time familiar to us are becoming more and more foreign to them as they become more immersed in their modern landscapes and technologies. The interior installations awake the senses, the dimensional experience, engage the viewer in their primordial sense of wonder and exploration through involving their entire bodes as a way to move through the work. They are environments. The design work is similar to aposematic coloration in nature; in one moment it displays itself as beautiful through coloration and patterning and at the same time is simultaneously a warning that something may be poisonous or dangerous. People have the memory of these utilities, inherently, but through buffer of our cultivated spaces, those faculties lie dormant and get reorganized as spectacle and recategorized as exotic. I am aware of the disconnect through artifice and technology. The large-scale outdoor pieces explore these ideas on a colossal scale and investigate the dialog between organic forms and structures and architecture. They are a new topology. My smaller paper sculptures are born of an intimate investigation of forms, colors, shapes, patterns, micro and macro. They too are hybrids between biomatter that populates the surface of the earth. Both familiar and foreign, simultaneously.

Artists rarely, if ever pursue art for the money. Nonetheless, we all have bills and responsibilities and many aspiring artists are discouraged from pursuing art due to financial reasons. Any advice or thoughts you’d like to share with prospective artists?
We do what we do because it’s a compulsion. Because we have no other choice. Because we have something to say, to share, to express and the significance of our individual vocabulary can be a contribution to the world we live in. As a culture generators, we have the ability to create the fabric through which people move in this world. I believe in the work. I believe in creativity as a catalyst for innovation. My advice…is to work. Make the work, but to also be smart about it. Being a professional artist is a balance. A balance between business and contribution. It’s about figuring out how the distinct and unique nature of what and who you are as an artist fits into the system of society. It’s not about pure expression alone, while a person can have the faculties for expression and poetic sensibilities to feel and see, it takes awakening to the self and being honest about who you are as an individual and how that distinct experience can be crafted into something that speaks to others. As an artist, you have to balance them both, the self with the system.

What’s the best way for someone to check out your work and provide support?
I’m fortunate enough to be working with multiple galleries. My current exhibition, “Axiom”, is on display at my gallery, Hashimoto Contemporary in San Francisco, CA until Nov. 24th. The exhibition features a new series of hand-printed and hand-cut paper sculptures. Works from this series will also travel to Miami this year for Art Basel and will be featured with the gallery in Context Art Fair. Additionally works are available through AFA Gallery in New York, NY, Treason Gallery in Seattle, WA, and Nextstreet Gallery in Paris, France.

Upcoming the biggest project I have on the books is a massive large-scale exterior growth installation that I will be creating on the outside of Belcastel, Aveyron, France in June 2019. My exhibition “Ignis Fatuus” will take over this medieval fortress, traversing the entire castle. Smaller sculptural works will be available for purchase on the inside as well.

People can support the work through donations to Crystal Wagner. Donations are accepted through paypal info@crystalwagner.com. Any and all contributions give me the ability to keep doing what I do. They can also purchase the smaller sculptural works or print works which help fund the studio in between the larger more ambitious projects.

Contact Info:

• Address: 1325 N. 5th St. Apt. 406
• Website: www.crystalwagner.com
• Phone: 3863835009
• Email: info@crystalwagner.com
• Instagram: @artistcrystalwagner.com
• Facebook: @contemporaryartistcrystalwagner

Image Credit:
Crystal Wagner Studio with the exception of the large outdoor purple piece which is credited to Uniqua Lodz.

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